with a considerable degree of accuracy.  We can estimate, for instance, the probable number of murders which will take place in a year in a given number of inhabitants.  Whether this theory is true or not would require a vast amount of study and observation to determine.  We know that population in our time crowds in cities; especially is this true of the classes most likely to furnish criminals.  Still, in spite of this, do not most of us feel that it has of late years been rather safer to reside in a city than in the country?  Consider the numbers of lawless and too often cruel tramps which have overrun the country towns and villages for a few years past, making it so unsafe for women to walk unattended in woods and highways, even in the quietest parts of New England, where once they could go with perfect safety alone and at all hours.  No laws can be too severe against cruel tramps.  It has been affirmed that people who live in cities are in reality more moral than country people of the same class.

Is this state of things brought about by the infliction of light sentences, or is it caused by the increase among us of a bad foreign element?  We have heard many serious and humane persons express themselves as in favor of a restoration of the whipping-post and stocks, really supposing that these things would lessen crime.  But is it likely that the old methods of punishment would be considered by criminals themselves as severer than the present?  Let us see what some of the last century rogues thought about the matter.  At a session of the Supreme Judicial Court held at Salem, Mass., in December, 1788, one James Ray was sentenced, for stealing goods from the shop of Captain John Hathorne (a relative of Nathaniel Hawthorne), to sit upon the gallows with a rope about his neck for an hour, to be whipped with thirty-nine stripes, and to be confined to hard labor on Castle Island (Boston Harbor) for three years.  “It is observable of this man,” the account continues, “that he has been lately released from a two years’ service at the Castle, that during the trial he was very merry and impudent, and continued in the same humor while his sentence was reading, holding up his head and looking boldly at the Court, till the three years’ confinement was mentioned; when his countenance changed, his head dropped on his breast, and he fetched a deep groan,—­an instance of how much more dreadful the idea of labor is to such villains than that of Corporal punishment.”

At a session of the Court of Oyer and Terminer held at Norristown, Pa., for the county of Montgomery, Oct. 11, 1786, we are furnished with a case in point.  “A bill was presented against Philip Hoosnagle for burglary, who was convicted by the traverse Jury on the clearest testimony.  He was, after a very pathetick and instructing admonition from the bench, sentenced to five years’ hard labour, under the new act of Assembly.  It was with some difficulty that this reprobate was prevailed upon to make the election of labour instead of the halter, ... a convincing proof,” the report says, “that the punishments directed by the new law are more terrifying to idle vagabonds than all the horrors of an ignominious death.”